Eternal Snow
by AndromedaStarr
Summary: Outcast meets outcast. She discovers someone she can relate to, and he realizes that yes, it is in fact possible to love again...
1. Hope and sugar cookies

Hope Khaida was an outcast in Suburbia. She'd moved there a grand total of a week ago and she was already an outcast. The residents – gossipy women with curlers in their hair and unbelievably small dogs – were afraid of her and she knew it. The other kids at school despised her because she saw in them what they couldn't bear to think about, and she could see beauty where they saw only ugliness.

The 'gift of the sight', as her grandmother had always called it, had always been Hope's strongest strength, but sometimes it was also her mortal weakness. Because she could see what others were blind to, she got fired up at the smallest things – the sight of a woman kicking her dog, or the taunting of a boy. Hope knew all too well what it was like to be the outcast because you were different.

She was different. It wasn't external, exactly, and yet it was more than just the sight. Hope was seventeen, tall, strong and often violent. She displayed an utter disregard for rules and espoused complete freedom from societal restrictions, a trait which had run in her family for generations and which had gotten her into trouble quite a bit. She had light brown hair streaked with gold and red, and it had a way of glittering in the sun. Her eyes were not brown but gold, dark gold, and she had a light tan, showing no tendency to burn.

Hope was, though, far from perfect. The insides of both forearms were covered in parallel scars, starting from about two inches above her wrist and ending just below the elbow. They ran across, not wrist to elbow. Some were fresh, but most were old, nothing more than painful reminders of a bloody and often brutal past. For this reason she wore long sleeves, and when she didn't, she walked around with her arms folded at her waist, forearms kept hidden.

She wasn't even beautiful, or so her father had told her when she'd been young enough for him to rule. _"You're one hell of an ugly bitch, girl,"_ he'd said, sneering at her and then throwing a cuff that had knocked her head back into the wall. _"Don't take after your momma, do ya?"_

It was ten o'clock in the night and Hope was out on the streets. No one else was there, of course; all sane Suburbia residents were in their houses either watching TV or yakking on the phone. Hope didn't care; she was fed up of this town and wanted to get the hell out.

Her restless eyes roamed the green grass and pastel-painted houses and landed on a hill that rose high above the town. It hung over the town like some kind of prophecy of doom, great and dark and foreboding. Perched on its precipitous peak was a black castle that looked like something out of a Tim Burton film. Hope was instantly fascinated.

"I wonder what the lights would look like from up there?" she wondered to herself, and then set off at a run. She jogged down the street and broke away at the old path. By the time she drew near to the gates, the castle seemed even larger, if that was possible. She ducked under a knot of vines and turned sideways to pass through the slightly open gate.

The courtyard was _amazing_. Intricately designed topiaries of dogs, cats, dragons, dancing girls and a thousand different things she could not name filled the vast expanse of yard that led up to the castle. Flowers bloomed in abundance, and Hope was surprised at the proliferation of life exuded from somewhere that, from a distance, had seemed so dead.

She wandered through the courtyard, brushing things lightly with her hand, and then came to a sudden halt. On the ground before her lay a patch of dried blood, or at least it _had_ been dried blood many, many years ago.

She knelt next to it and perused it, not finding anything disgusting in what she was doing. "Old blood," she muttered softly, and stood up, brushing off the knees of her jeans. It didn't matter to her anyway.

The door loomed above her now. It had a certain allure to it, almost like it was tempting her. Hope reached out and laid her hand on it. The muscles bunched in her arms as, silently, it opened a single foot, and then stopped. Hope entered and closed the door behind her, pulling down her sleeves to hide the marks on her arms.

It was like a great laboratory, with machines and conveyor belts and racks of contraptions she'd never seen before. Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs and looked like it hadn't been used in centuries. And to crown it all off, it smelled like...

"Sugar cookies," she whispered, and laughed softly. "Will wonders never cease?"

Hope moved to the conveyor belt and looked into a huge bowl. She picked up a spoon and then glanced over at what seemed to be a now-defunct oven. She laughed again, somehow feeling as though she was not disturbing anything by being here. "Robots and inventions and...sugar cookies?"

"The Inventor liked sugar cookies," came a quiet voice from behind her.


	2. Edward

She paused momentarily, but did not turn around. "Did he?" She wiped the rim of the mixing bowl with a finger and grimaced at the dust that came off on it. "What happened to him?"

"He never woke up." There was such sadness in the voice, it was almost palpable.

Hope's heart was nearly breaking, despite the fact that the owner of the voice had spoken two sentences so far. She raised her eyebrows at what he had said. "Am I disturbing you?" she asked. "I'll go, if you want me to."

There was a soft snicking noise. "Don't go." The voice was more lonely than anything she had ever heard. "Please."

"You want me to stay?" Hope reached into a bin at the end of the conveyor belt and picked up a star-shaped cookie, covered in a thick layer of cobweb.

"Yes." That snicking noise again. "I don't want you to go."

Hope dropped the cookie back in and turned around. He was standing in a shaft of moonlight. "Then I won't," she said softly.

He was tall and dressed in a suit of black leather that had no opening as far as she could see and which had numerous belts, chains, spikes and locks on it. The suit was attached to the heavy black boots he wore on his feet. His face was very pale and he had many thin scars on it; his hair was a black tangle around it. His hands...well, his hands were a great jumble of razorsharp blades. It was these which had made the noises.

His hands twitched, and the blades snicked again, as though in distress, or nervousness. "You won't go?" he asked almost plaintively, like a child who is afraid of the dark. "Even though..." He held up the deadly weapons that were attached to his wrists where hands should have been.

She smiled slightly, shrugged. "_Should_ I go?"

He looked down at the floor. "I might hurt you."

Hope laughed, and his eyes rose to hers. "You can't hurt me any worse than I've already hurt myself." She pushed up her sleeves and held out her arms like Jesus on the cross so he could see her scars. "And I'm not afraid."

He lowered his hands, holding them out to the side so he wouldn't accidentally stab himself in the leg. "Why did you come here?

"I came to see the lights," she said simply, and left her sleeves rolled up, suddenly decided that this man wouldn't care much one way or the other about her scars, since he had so many of his own. "Are they beautiful from up here?"

"Yes," he said. "But you can't see them from down here. You'd have to come upstairs for that. There's a window."

Hope met his eyes, dark pools of emptiness and longing, and smiled. "Will you show me?"

He led her up the stairs and onto the completely barren top floor, where there was a chair at a broken window. She crossed the floor to it, resting one hand lightly on the back as she surveyed the spectacle of the lights in Suburbia.

"This is lovely," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "You should see it."

He moved to stand next to her, and she could smell the leather of his suit, could almost feel the warmth of his body. "It's always beautiful from here."

"Yes, I forgot," she said, and laughed, patting the chair. "You must sit here a lot in the night, just looking down at the lights. Do you sit here in the day too?"

He looked down at the floor, and his blades twitched. "I like the dark better," he said. "That way I can't see the people."

Hope turned suddenly and looked at him, and it seemed to surprise him. He took a step back, and his dark eyes widened. "Tell me about your hands," she said directly. Hope had always been very direct.

"The Inventor made me," he said haltingly. "But then he...he died, and it wasn't Christmas yet, so...he couldn't give me the hands he promised." He looked down again. "I'm not finished."

Hope carefully took hold of his wrist, and held it up so she could look at his hands. There were five blades of different kinds, which ranged in size from a hand scissors to pruning shears. Most of them were scissors, but some were more like knives. She lightly ran her thumb along the largest blade, and hissed softly when it drew blood.

"I'm sorry," he said instantly, and an ashamed look came into his eyes, a look like that of a dog when it has done something wrong and is both deeply wounded by it and afraid of punishment.

Hope smiled and glanced down at her thumb, watching as the blood ran down her hand to her elbow and was soaked up by the sleeve of her shirt. "Don't worry," she told him. "It's not your fault. I should have known better." She wiped off the blood on her black shirt, so it was nearly invisible, and he seemed to relax a little.

Now she studied his face. Frowning slightly, she traced a scar on his cheek and he jumped. "I'm not going to hurt you," she promised, and touched another one on his lip. "You cut yourself quite a bit," she mused.

He gave a tentative half-smile. "Kind of hard not to."

She answered his smile with one of her own. "Ah, you smiled. I was wondering if you knew how to." She realized she was holding one of his hands very lightly in one of hers. The cold steel was slowly warming to her touch. "Do you have a name?"

"Edward," he said very, very quietly. "Do you?"

"Edward," she said, testing it, having not heard his question.

He blinked. "Your name is Edward?"

She glanced up and laughed. "No! My name is Hope."

Edward seemed to consider this. "Hope," he said at last. "Fitting that a girl whose name is Hope should find someone who has none."

Hope was startled at his articulacy. Prior to that sentence he had only uttered short statements, but this pronouncement assured her that all was well with Edward upstairs. She looked at him now with newfound respect.

He blushed and looked away, unused to the attention. "Did you...did you see the courtyard?"

"Yes," she said. "I did. You did it all, of course?"

He nodded. "There isn't much to do except...well...take care of it." He waved one deadly hand around to indicate the castle, the grounds, everything.

Hope was looking around in awe. "How many rooms are there?"

"I don't know." Edward seemed uneasy. "I don't go to the rest of the house." His face contorted slightly as he searched for the words. "Bad memories."

She understood this and changed the subject. Unfortunately, however, it was to a worse one. "Edward...it's getting late." She looked up at him. "I should be going."

"No," he said suddenly, as though afraid to be by himself. "Please...don't go."

She was still holding his right hand with her left, and she placed her right hand on his neck, brushing his cheek, stroking his inordinately pale, smooth skin. "I'll come back," she said, and meant it. "I promise."

He closed his eyes, leaning into her touch, and she realized with a jolt that he must be starved for attention, that he had probably never experienced affection before in his life.

"Really?" It was so soft she could have sworn it was the wind.

"Really," she replied with absolutely certainty, and, reluctantly, let him go. His eyes flickered open and he stood there, looking so innocent and so vulnerable that she wanted to take him in her arms and never let him go. "I'll come back," she repeated. "I will."

"Okay." He said it with childlike acceptance. "Goodnight, Hope."

She was almost to the top of the stairs. She turned, glanced over her shoulder, smiled. "Goodnight, Edward."

That night, for the first time in what felt like forever, she had no dreams at all.


	3. Skipping school, and lunch

The next day was Friday, and Hope had a whole day of school to fight through before she could dash up the hill as fast as she could go and see Edward. And, as usual, she got off to the wrong start.

"Miss Khaida!" Mrs. Peterson stormed, taking off her glasses and waving them in Hope's face. "If you can't concentrate you can just spend the next period in the principal's office!"

Hope blinked. "All right." She got up unconcernedly and sauntered out of the class, ignoring the angry calls for her to come back. It was the perfect opportunity, and she wasn't about to _not_ take it.

She didn't go to the principal's office; Mr. McAfferty was a balding man with an enormous belly and a lecherous mind, and all he would've done was make suggestive comments while leering at her. Hope walked straight out of the school and went to the diner, where she bought herself two servings of food. It consisted mainly of steak, potatoes and broccoli, but it was healthy and substantial. She took a plastic fork and set off up the hill.

Pushing the door open was slightly harder this time, as she had food in her hands, but she pressed her back against it and pushed at the ground with her legs, and the door opened the required foot and stopped. She wriggled through the space – a little harder this time, too – and nudged it shut.

This time she went straight to the top floor. He was standing there as she came up the stairs, looking up through an enormous hole in the roof at the sky. She stood at the top of the stairs for a few moments, studying his back, and then said softly, "Edward."

He turned around, somewhat jerkily, and the ghost of a smile curved his lips. "Hope."

She held up a container. "I brought you food. I thought you might want."

He looked despairingly at the plastic fork in her other hand. "I can't –"

She shook her head. "Don't you worry your head about it, Edward. Where shall we sit? On the floor like best friends around a campfire? Or is there a table somewhere?"

Edward looked so much like a lost and confused little boy that Hope laughed. "The floor is much more fun anyway. Come on, let's sit down. Not in the sun, over there, where it's dark and cool."

They sat together in the shade, cross-legged. She was next to him, their knees pressing against each other. "I can't use forks," he began awkwardly, and his eyes dropped. "My hands –"

"I told you not to worry," she chided him laughingly, and opened both containers. Scooping up a forkful of potato, she said, "I'll feed you."

They used the same fork, first her feeding him, then herself, and between bites she told him about her past. Edward was so very easy to talk to, and it was probably because of that quality he had; there was something so pure about him that it just about took Hope's breath away.

"He beat me constantly," Hope said as he sliced the steak into manageable pieces. "It was a task just trying to avoid him when he was drunk." She sighed. "The worst thing wasn't the blows. It was the way he couldn't see beauty. He couldn't see it if it was beneath the surface; if you just had to look a little for it he would give up and say it wasn't there." She looked around the gigantic room. "He would never be able to see the beauty in this place." Her eyes lingered on Edward's face. "He would never be able to see the beauty in you."

One of his shears sliced straight through meat and Styrofoam, and plunged into the wooden floor. He looked stunned by what she had said, but refused to look at her. Yanking the blade out of the floor, he skewered the cut piece of meat on the end of it and raised it to his mouth.

Hope watched this process in something like amusement. "Edward," she said at last. "Forget what everyone said about you when you came down to Suburbia the first time. They're all dead and gone now, and the people who live there now are probably their grandchildren. But forget them. They don't matter."

"They still think the same," he said, shaking his head as his blade hit the floor again and pulling it out with a jerk. "That hasn't changed."

"No, the mentality's still the same, I'll give you that." She sighed, thinking of the boys who chased her home sometimes, of the girls who laughed at her behind their hands in the hallways, of the geeky little kid who so often lay bleeding on the sidewalk on her way home. "There's no tolerance there at all."

"I won't go down again," Edward said, almost timidly. "The last time..."

"I know what happened the last time," Hope said, saving him the trouble. "I know all about that. And I'm not asking you to come down again. In fact, if you wanted to, I'd have reason to be worried about your mental stability."

He gave her a questioning look that held a touch of amusement, but said nothing.

Hope sighed again. "Edward, forget everything they said. Forget ever coming down out of this castle. Forget Suburbia entirely." She laid down the fork. "Now look at me."

Edward lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His were pools of ink, and in their unfathomable depths she could see shattered glass and a whirlwind of emotion. Loss, confusion, fear, innocence. Need. Endless, aching need. Need to be _loved_.

Oh, how she knew that feeling.

"You are _beautiful_," she whispered, hardly aware that she was holding his bladelike hands in hers, not even noticing the small cut that had appeared on her palm from where he had sliced her by accident. "They can't see it because they're _blind_, Edward, and they say you're ugly, but don't you believe them. Because _I _know better, Edward. _I_ know you're beautiful and _I_ can see it. I don't even have to look very hard."

He said nothing, but his eyes spoke for him, as was his wont, and he asked her endless questions and above all else there was loneliness in his eyes. And the loneliness overflowed and it was then she realized that he was crying, that there were tears running down his cheeks, following in the paths of earlier tears that she had not seen in the dim light.

Hope pushed aside the food and she crawled into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him. "Oh, Edward," she whispered. "You are not alone."

And for some reason this made him cry harder, and he held her, being careful not to touch her with his deadly hands, and he buried his face in her hair and he cried. She tangled her fingers in his messy wild hair and hugged him all the tighter. "I'm here," she told him as her own tears came, over and over again. "You are not alone."

Long after they had both stopped crying, they sat there, she in his lap, arms around him and he holding her. His cheek was pressed against the top of her head, and their eyes were closed. It was a while before either of them spoke.

"You are beautiful," she said, and lifted her head so she could see his face, her fingertips easily tracing the lines of the scars. "So beautiful."

Edward lifted a lock of hair, holding it up on the flat of one blade. Leaning forward, he let it fall against his face, and then he smiled.

"No," he said seriously. "You are."

Hope examined his face, the dark shadows beneath his eyes, the numerous scars, the utter paleness of skin that had probably rarely if ever seen the sun. The thought of the sun made her look outside, through the hole in the roof, and she saw that it was dark. "Oh shit," she muttered, and closed her eyes, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"What?" Edward sounded alarmed.

She was getting to her feet. "My aunt's going to kill me...I skipped most of school today and it's –" She checked her watch. "– nine o'clock!" Hope ran her hands back through her hair. "How did it get so late?"

He stood there, nervous, and his hands made that soft snicking noise that they did when he was agitated. "I – I'm sorry."

She realized she had worried him and sighed. She wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her head on his chest. "This isn't your fault," she said. "None of it is. It's my fault and I should've known better."

"You say that a lot," he commented, hugging her back lightly, making sure his blades didn't touch her.

"Then it's probably true," she muttered, and stood back, looking up at him. "I'll come back," she promised. "You know I will. I don't know when I'll be able to, but I will."

He nodded and, as usual, didn't look at her. His blades snicked almost imperceptibly. "Goodnight, Hope," he said quietly.

"Goodnight, Edward," she replied as she headed for the stairs.

Even though she knew she was in trouble, she took her time walking home, tilting her head back to see the stars. Suburbia, pastel paradise that it was, was so unreal, so distant from her reality. The only thing that was real to her was Edward; his blades and his hair and the darkness he lived in.

Hope swore as she prepared to do battle with her aunt that one day she would share the darkness with him.


	4. Winter, love and snow

Winter came. Hope had been confined to her bedroom since she'd returned – for three days – with food pushed under the door, and was frustrated up to her ears. It was a horrible day, and the wind was something else, but she decided that today was the day she would brave the cold wintry weather and go to see Edward. She'd been driving herself half crazy thinking about him; she hoped he was doing all right.

When her aunt left to go carolling with her bratty young cousins, Hope got out of bed and opened the window. She was on the second floor, but that didn't bother her. She yanked at her sheet, couldn't pull it off the bed, and simply dropped out of the window.

She landed in a snowdrift fifteen feet or so below. It cushioned her fall quite well, although she was wet and cold when she struggled out of it. But that didn't bother her at all. If Hope had it her way, she would never return to Suburbia again.

Hope ran at breakneck speed up the winding path and slipped past the gate, dashing through the lovingly tended topiaries in the courtyard. This time when she pushed the door closed behind her, she placed a thick piece of wood across it to lock it.

Noiselessly, she headed up the stairs and then stopped on the second floor. She heard sounds coming from somewhere off to her left, and followed them.

Edward was standing in the middle of a huge room, with great chunks of ice all around him. He was slicing and dicing at an unimaginable rate at one of them, which was a half-finished carving not as yet recognizable. Around him stood more, finished.

Hope allowed her jaw to drop as she stared at a larger-than-life girl made of ice, wearing a huge jacket. The girl stood with her arms thrown open, and her sleeves were rolled up. Deep slashes engraved her icy forearms.

Next to that one was another of the same girl sitting on the ground, a fork of something in her hand, a smile on her face. There were maybe eight or nine sculptures finished, and they were all of her. Hope wanted to speak, but realized there was nothing to say.

She drifted through the room and paused behind him. He was working on an outstretched hand, ice shavings flying all around him. Hope lifted a hand and brought it down gently on his shoulder.

Edward jerked, pulling back his hand just in time so as not to damage the sculpture. He stood there, his back to her, very still.

"Why did you do these?" she asked so quietly she could barely hear herself. "Why did you sculpt me?"

"Because you came," he answered in an equally quiet voice. "You came, and you said you'd come again, and you did. And you...you gave me food, and you were nice to me. You _cared_ for me." His voice was filled with something like awe.

Hope made a rapid decision. "And I'll never leave you again," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist to embrace him from behind. "I'll never leave you."

Edward stiffened slightly. "What? What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to leave," she said simply, shrugging. "I'm going to stay with you." She released him and moved around to stand between him and the statue. "These are beautiful, Edward, but...wouldn't you rather have a human being to hold? Someone who's not carved in ice?"

He stared down at her as if he couldn't understand what she was saying, or as if he had trouble believing it. "You're staying? Here?" He shook his head in consternation. "Why?"

Embracing him, she stood on her tiptoes and, ever so tenderly, kissed him. Pressing her cheek against his, she whispered, "Because I love you."

Edward's eyes closed in acceptance of this, and carefully he held her close to him, his cheek against her hair. "Really?"

Hope smiled at this dangerous-looking man's curious gentleness. "Yes, really. We'll stay up here, and it won't be so dark anymore. We'll brighten it up, Edward. Together. And both of us can keep the courtyard beautiful."

"Then...it won't be quiet anymore?" He seemed afraid to believe in what he was hearing. "And...we can watch the birds lay their eggs...there are lots of birds here. And at night...we can watch the lights."

She closed her eyes, leaning against him, letting her entire body relax in his comfortable embrace. "Yes," she whispered. "At night we can watch the lights. And in the day there will be birds and music...and each other."

Edward's face twisted slightly, and tears slid down over his cheeks until they became lost in Hope's hair. She reached up and brushed them away with her fingertips, tracing the outline of his lips before kissing him again.

"Don't cry," she whispered. "I love you."

"I..." He stopped, then seemed to fight with himself. Finally, however, he managed to say, "I...I love you too."

Snow began to fall, light and white and as pure as Edward's heart. That winter's coldness was not bitter, and nobody froze to death in snowdrifts or died in accidents on the frozen roads. That winter was the best winter seen by anyone in Suburbia ever, and every winter after it, for as long as there was winter, was equally pleasant.

For snow had not fallen in Suburbia until the year Edward Scissorhands fell in love, and it kept on snowing for as long as he loved.

And Edward never stopped.


End file.
